June 2010

After my picture book on Hans Christian Andersen came out (The Perfect Wizard), editor Steve Meltzer and I cast about for a follow-up. I suggested J. M. Barrie, Mark Twain, L. Frank Baum, Beatrix Potter, Rudyard Kipling, Louisa May Alcott. As you can see, we settled on Barrie. I collected about

I was in the doctor’s office years ago, waiting for him to come into the room, and reading the Smithsonian Magazine. In it was a story about East Coast women who moved west to live to the Nebraska territory. Often these women went crazy because there were no identifiable sounds there. It was